#poor dunk

Egg: ...Maybe you're not the knight I thought you were.

Daeron: Will you take Egg to squire?

Dunk: Told your father. He's not my concern.

Daeron: ...You know, my brother wasn't always such a little monster.

Dunk: Egg is no monster. He's just a boy.

Daeron: I didn't mean Egg. But... no doubt we'll make a man out of him, too. Aerion was quite the glad child once.

Let's manipulate poor hedge knights with a big brother <3

Chapter(3)Of Rubies and Gold

A tiny warning, Targest incoming.That's all.

The night air was thick and close, heavy with the promise of rain that never seemed to come. Duncan the Tall had been walking for hours.

His feet hurt. His back hurt. His pride hurt most of all, a raw wound that every refusal scraped a little deeper.

"No. Never heard of him."

"Ser Arlan? Of Pennytree? The name's not familiar."

"A hedge knight from fifty years ago? What do you take me for, a maester? Get out of here."

"Even if I knew him, lad, I wouldn't vouch for you. Look at you. You're not a knight. You're a scarecrow with a sword."

The pavilions of the great houses glowed like paper lanterns in the gathering dusk, silk walls lit from within by candles and braziers. The tents of the lesser knights were humblercanvas and rope, pegged into the hard-packed earthbut even they seemed like palaces to Dunk, who had spent the past night sleeping under a tree with his cloak for a blanket and his saddle for a pillow.

No master. No proof that he was anything but what they had called him: a Flea Bottom rat who'd crawled out of the gutter and decided to play at knighthood.

Ser Arlan would have known what to do, Dunk thought, and the thought was a knife between his ribs. Ser Arlan would have talked his way in, made them laugh, found a sponsor before the sun went down. Ser Arlan knew everyone. Ser Arlan was a knight.

And what was Duncan? A big lad with a dead man's sword and a dead man's name, walking through a sea of silk and steel, trying not to drown.

He had peeled away from the main encampment an hour ago, following a path that led toward a small copse of elm trees at the edge of the tourney grounds. The tents here were sparse pitch-black shapes against the deeper black of the woodsand Dunk had almost turned back twice. No one of importance would camp this far from the lists. No one of importance would vouch for him.

But he was desperate, and desperation makes fools of better men than Dunk.

The tent was set apart from the others, a full hundred yards of open ground between it and the nearest pavilion. In the darkness, Dunk could barely make out its shapelow and sleek, more like a pavilion than a campaign tent, but made of a fabric so dark it seemed to drink the starlight. No banners flew from its peak. No sigils marked its walls. A single rope light glowed faintly near its entrance, and through the gap in the flaps, Dunk could see the warm orange flicker of candlelight.A light flickered inside the tent. Low and golden, the light of a single candle or a small lantern.

Someone's in there, he thought. Maybe someone who doesn't care about names and vouchers and the proper way of things. Maybe someone who'll listen.

The tent was larger inside than it had seemed from outside not a pavilion, not a great hall of canvas and silk, but a comfortable space for two. A brazier glowed in the corner, throwing off a warmth that smelled faintly of sandalwood. Thick carpets covered the grass beneath. And on a heap of furs and velvet cushions in the center of it all

Dunk's brain stopped working.

Aerion Targaryen was not wearing his armour.

This should not have been a revelation. Princes did not sleep in steel. But Dunk had only ever seen Aerion as a creature of gilt and enamel, of rubies and gold wire and chainmail that moved like water. To see him now in a loose linen tunic the color of undyed wool, unlaced at the throat, his silver hair wild and tangled as though he'd just rolled out of bed was like seeing a dragon without its scales. He looked almost human.

He was holding something up to the candlelight. A ruby. It was enormous, the size of a quail's egg even after it was cut ,dangling from a rich gold chain and even in the dim glow it burned with an inner fire that seemed to drink the light and give it back doubled. Aerion turned it this way and that, admiring the facets, and then he held it next to a face.

Aenar's face.

His hair in loose braids and no gold to be found in them.

Aenar, whose pale skin seemed to glow in the candlelight, pale as milk, pale as moonlight, pale as the belly of a fish that had never seen the sun. The ruby cast a red sheen across his cheek, his throat, the sharp line of his collarbone

Gods be good, Dunk thought, his mind finally catching up to his eyes, he's naked.

The fur blanket was pooled around Aenar's waist, no higher. Above it, nothing. No tunic, no shirt, no smallclothesjust miles of pale, unblemished skin, the smooth plane of his chest, the dark circles of his nipples, the delicate architecture of his ribs. His hair was spread across the pillows like molten silver, and his eyesthose terrible, beautiful pale purple eyeswere half-lidded, watching his brother with an expression Dunk could not name.

"It complements you," Aerion was saying, his voice low and intimate, nothing like the high, petulant sneer Dunk had heard before. "The red against the white. Like blood on snow."

Aenar smiled. It was a different smile than the one Dunk had seen before softer, warmer, almost sweet. "You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

Aerion set the ruby aside on a small table covered in velvet, where six other gems of similar size lay scattered like fallen starsand reached out to touch his brother's face. His fingers traced the line of Aenar's jaw, the curve of his cheek, the soft place beneath his ear. Aenar leaned into the touch like a cat leaning into a hand that meant to pet it.

Brothers, Dunk's mind supplied helpfully. They're brothers. They're just... close. Twins are close. Everyone knows that. It's...

Aerion leaned down and kissed Aenar on the mouth.

It was not a brotherly kiss. Dunk had seen knights embrace after a joust, had seen fathers kiss their sons' brows, had seen men clasp hands and call it friendship. This was none of those things. This was the kiss of two people who knew each other's mouths better than their own, who had mapped every inch of each other's bodies in the dark, who had no shame left to lose.

Aerion's hand came up to fist in Aenar's hair. Aenar's free hand the one not holding the ruby slid up Aerion's thigh, fingers digging into the wool of his breeches. The kiss deepened. Aenar's head fell back against the furs, his throat bared, and Aerion followed him down like a falling star.

And then Aerion pushed him.

It was not gentle. It was not slow. It was a shove, hard and deliberate, that sent Aenar sprawling across the furs with his hair spread out beneath him like a silver fan. The fur blanket slipped lower, revealing the sharp jut of his hipbones, the dark thatch of hair at the base of his belly, and

Dunk ran.

He did not think about it. He did not decide to run. His legs simply carried him, crashing through the darkness, tripping over tent ropes and stumbling into bushes and gasping for air that seemed too thin to fill his lungs. The trees whipped past him. The path disappeared under his feet. He ran until his sides burned and his vision blurred and he could no longer see the glow of the single rope light behind him.

Then he stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, and vomited into the grass.

You saw nothing, he told himself, over and over, while his stomach heaved. You saw nothing. It was dark. You were tired. Your eyes were playing tricks.

But he had seen. He knew he had seen. The ruby swinging on its chain. Aenar's naked chest. Aerion's hand in his brother's hair. The way they had kissed, so familiar, so practiced, like a dance they had performed a thousand times before.

They're twins, Dunk thought, and the word felt wrong in his head, heavy and sour. They're brothers. They're princes. They're.....Targayens.

They were something that would get him killed if he spoke of it. He knew that too. Not because anyone would believe him who would believe a hedge knight over a dragon prince?but because Aerion would know. Or Aenar would know. Those pale purple eyes would look at him across the tourney grounds, and they would see what he had seen, and they would smile those terrible smiles, and Dunk would disappear.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up straight.

I didn't see anything, he told himself again. This time, he almost believed it.

The walk back to his elm tree was long and dark. The camp was quiet now, the fires burned down to coals, the laughter and music faded to memory. Dunk curled up in his thin cloak and stared at the stars through the gaps in the leaves above him.

He thought about Ser Arlan, who had taught him that a knight protected the weak and defended the innocent and kept his vows no matter the cost.

He thought about Aerion's face when the apple struck him that awful, bruised rage and Aenar's soft voice talking about mercy while a family's livelihood bled into the mud. Those apples were bought by the last coins of the whole family, with hope to make profit at the Tourney.

And he thought about the ruby, swinging back and forth, back and forth, painting the darkness red. The gems amd Jewels Aenar always adorn himself in...it seems they all come from Aerion. They were gifts...or claims,proofs that only he is Aenar's provider. Proofs that Aenar wore proudly.

I'm going to joust tomorrow, Dunk told himself, because he had to believe something or he would fall apart. I'm going to find someone to vouch for me. I'm going to prove that I'm a knight. And then I'm going to leave this place and never think about the dragon twins again.

It was a good plan.

It was a fool's plan.